Improvement in the manufacture of railroad-rails



metal, to reduce the cost of manufacture.

and upward per yard, and cut it in two parts JNETED STATES PATENT OF ICE.

JAo'oB REESE, 0E PrrrsBUae, PENNSYLVANIA. 1

IMPROVEMENT IN THE- MANUFACTURE OF RAILROAD-RAILS.

Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 175,300, dated March 28, 1876; application file August 24, 1871.

To all whom it may concern Be it known that I, JACOB REESE, of Pittsburg, in the county of Allegheny and State of Pennsylvania, 'have'invented a new and Improved Process for the Manufacture of Rails for Narrow-Gage Railroads; and I do hereby declare the following to ma full, clear, and exact description thereof.

1n the ordinary method of manufacturing T-shaped railroad-rails, the mass or pile of which the rail is made is composed of plates or pieces of rolled bars of iron cut to a suitable length for convenience in handling. The top or cap piece of the pile, designedto form the cap of the rail, is iron of a hard, close texture, and the bottom or bed-piece, for forming the flange of the rail, is iron of a soft, ductile texture, while the center portion of the pile, which is to form the web of the rail, is formed of common muck-bar iron. This pile is heated and rolled out intoshape, the hard metal forming the cap of the rail, the muck-bar the web or center, and the soft metal the bottom or flange. 1

To. use up old and damaged rails, and thereby cheapen the manufacture, manufacturers have cut up the old rails into lengths, piled or fagoted them, and rolled them out into new rails. A rail so made is a heterogeneous mass of metal, the three kinds of iron used in the manufacture of the first rail being mixed in the fagoting process. Such a rail, while much cheaper than'the original one, is at the same time much inferior in quality.

In view of this great loss in utilizing the old rails and of the fact that a large demand is now being made for rails from twenty-five to forty-five poundsto the yard for narrowgage railroads, I have invented or discovered my improvement, which I will now explain.

The object of my invention is to make use of old railroad-'railsin the manufacture of railroad-rails in such a manner as to produce a new rail equally as good in quality as the old rail was when first made, and by such use of the old rail, without the addition of more I take an old rail of, say, for instance, thirty feet in length, and weighing from fifty pounds of, say, fifteen feet in length. With a number of these half rails I charge a heating-furnace of the proper size, having adoor at each end. The charge I generally make is about five tons, but it should be suited to the capacity of the furnace.

After being heated the half rails are taken one by one to a train of rolls. At the first pass the rail is placed in the roll upside down and in passing is compressed so as to reduce its height in vertical section to the height of the rail to be made. In doing this the rail is drawn out but little, the iron being pressed into the web of the rail so as to thicken it. This. is done in order that the rail may be rolled out uniformly. After the rail has thus been reduced in height it is passed through the rolls in the usual manner a suflicient number of times to draw it out to the length and reduce it to the size required, after which it is straightened and punched in the usual way.

In the rail thus formed the diiferent kinds of iron have the same relative positions as they held in the old rail, i. e., the hard iron in the cap, the muck-bar iron in the web, and the soft, fibrous iron in the flange or base.

The old rails do not have to be raised to a welding-heat before rolling, unless the rail has been much damaged by wear.

In the manufacture of rails, as above described, I save the expense of fagotjng, of reheating, re-rolling, the cost of new cap and base pieces, and the costof fuel, iron, and 1abor, and yet produce a rail in all respects equally as good as if it had been made by the processes just enumerated.

Bessemer-steel rails do not wear like iron rails, but they frequently break, and, as they cannot be reworked by the old process, they are almost unsalable, causing great loss. By my process, however, I can re-roll them, and I find that such operation improves theirquality. I can make use of all pieces of rails over three feet long. A piece one yard long, weighing seventy pounds, can be reduced to a fail for coal-mines, 8w, weighing ten pounds a yard, and, when finished, six yards in length.

What I claim as my invention, and desire to secure by Letters Patent, is-

The hereinbefore-described improvement in thi art of re-rolling old rails, by first reducing In testimony whereof I, the fiaid JACOB their height so as to increase the mass of iron REESE, have hereunto set my hand. in the web, and then reforming them by rolling, so as to reduce the size of the rail with- JACOB REESE. out altering the relative position in the rail of Witnesses: the several qualities of iron of which the 01d W. N. PAXTON,

rail was composed. THOS. B. KERR. 

